It is July 9 today, and twenty-seven days until Convention is formally opened. In many respects it feels like yesterday that we finished the 2016 Convention. And yet, it also feels as if a lifetime of experience has been lived through since August 2016. What a paradox!

These words of John Varian speak of the forces that seem to swirl about us as we approach Convention Sunday:

By the power of the Bird of Life,Carried by its wings of fate,We are here together again,Sensing the Powers and their mystery,Reaching inward into ourselves for contacts imponderable,Being unified and identified by high magnetic brotherhood.The Gods are very close to us. We can feel their hands in blessing upon us.They make magic harmonies within our hearts and minds.We lift up our souls to them in love.New doorways are opened inwardly, secretSpirit doorways, where souls may enter into newVastnesses of comprehension, into new pathways of deeper lovingness.

We drink deeply of the Holy Grail, theCup the High Gods draw for us out from the God Cauldron.The convention passes, but the doorways need not close.In the hurry and haste of life coming, if we keep the peace withinwe can still be going in and coming out through them. Battle may be about us and through us, yet we must keep the deep serenity and peace.

We must save the power, if we wish to go in through the spirit entrances. We must help each other inward by loving our friends and comrades and their deep beauties,For if we see our own and their faults, we are in the outward life.And the deeper and deeper the beauties we see in themAnd ourselves, the wider the Gods will open the spirit doors.More and more entrance they will open to us, grander and grandercountries to live within,Greater and vaster vision in the Soul of Life.

Nine times nine our entrances inward may become.Nine times ninety-nine increases in living power we may have.Nine companies of nine times nine we will be in the end,And we, passing through the last great doorwayUnder the marvelous banner of the Lord Christ ¬¬––And we in conscious rank with the evolutionary hosts, theLight Wielders.

Remember, brothers and sisters,Do not let the opening doorways close.By the power of the Bird of Life,Carried by its wings of fate,We are here together again,Sensing the Powers and their mystery,Reaching inward into ourselves for contacts imponderable,Being unified and identified by high magnetic brotherhood.

These moving words by John Varian are describing the inner life of Convention itself. Additionally, he is describing life as it is lived year round by anyone who has committed his or her life to consciously traveling the Path of Discipleship. Convention has always been an uplifting battle of one sort or another. As the Convention forces converge on this Center, all of us have felt those feelings of intense pressure that we misinterpret as being the result of our neighbor’s dog or stereo, or the wild chickens or peacocks, or someone’s remark about a particular action of ours. Caught in the heat of the moment we find it difficult to step back onto the plane of forces to see how the high energy is impacting our actions. But the most important first step we can take is that of knowing such a step is even possible and that we can have a different kind of control over our own reactions.

During the Convention week as we meet together in both social and ceremonial gatherings, there is additional force generated by the focus of our aspirations and ideals. Everyone seems to go the extra mile in every situation. We hear the Master’s Message to the Convention and feel pulled by the heights, even while parts of our inmost selves are assailed by fear of the next step. But that next step, shorn of the fear that magnifies it all out of proportion is clearly outlined by Master Hilarion, as he says, “ . . . your relationships one to another must be stripped of all pretense, all self-seeking, all selfishness. The tests you will continue to meet are based on the Law of Brother/Sisterhood and involve the finer courtesies of life, the gentle services for youth and age, the ability to withhold rather than to give ridicule or criticism, to bear with and not to provoke, to entertain the Christ within your hearts in such a way that you become the absolute embodiment of Light and Love.”

Living here on the physical plane is all about the processes of learning to live fully and deeply in accord with All That Is with a growing awareness of how we affect others. The following story is a marvelous illustration of this principle. There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy drove 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. If you put a knife in a man and draw it out it won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.” Have we ever thought of our anger or sarcasm as a nail we drive into another?

Another part of the evolutionary process deals with forgiveness. Our next step in that process is to forgive the offender and forget the offense. This is not as easy as it sounds. Blue Star had this comment on forgiving and forgetting: “While memory is an inestimable blessing in some respects, it is a curse past telling in others. If forgiveness is one of the essentials of a Godlike life, that quality is impossible of attainment while memory persists in pointing the finger of indebtedness at the one to be forgiven. You have not fully forgiven an offense as long as you willingly retain memory of that offense, if it be against you personally, for every time memory brings a picture of it before your mental eyes –– consciously or unconsciously –– you begin to draw comparisons, forget your own liability to the same or a like offense and bring the offender before the judgment bar of your own lower nature. Over and over the details of the offense trail through your own mind, adding mental energy to the same, giving more and more life to the mental picture first formed, making it more and more possible for that picture of wrongdoing to impress itself on other minds in the same vibration, and so tempt others to the commission of a like offense.” It is interesting to note that in recent years the scientific world has described much the same process in scientific language!

We are told to seek out the hidden meaning of the messages of the Master because He is seldom able to put into comprehensible statements that which He wishes to convey. He does not mean to infer that we are lacking in intelligence, but He tells us that we put a veil over our own understanding when we carry out some personal wish or desire that is in opposition to some statement He has made.

In an early interview with the Master these are a few of the questions and answers presented to the group. As you listen, try to drop the feeling of “Oh, that was then, and this is now.” Notice how timely the words are now to circumstances in our own personal and community lives.

Question: “Have you any advice to give that would help us to right conclusions regarding the Temple Home Association?”

Answer: “This is a serious matter and my answer to this question must be well weighed before action is taken, in the case that you take such action as I shall indicate. When the Temple Home Association was formed, it was done more by permission than by my urging, and for one reason. If you will look back on the last few years, you will remember that a little before, and for some time after the Association was formed, all people who were particularly interested in social reform were in such a high state of tension on those connecting lines that any effort to bring them down and make them understand the most vital point in occultism, that of Centralization, would have only thrown them off the track.” [We need to remember the fervor of the socialistic movement at that time] “They could not believe that such an organization could not be formed and continued indefinitely on socialistic lines. Nothing but experience would teach them this and it became necessary for some of them to have this lesson and for nearly all of them at first interested.

“I have watched the work going on and saw the end from the very beginning. I knew it was impossible for it to be carried on to the wished-for finality as long as it was impossible for it to be founded on the one vital point to which I referred, Centralization. Human nature must change before it will be possible for any small number of people to work out that problem on those lines. I do not request that you should follow any advice I seem to give in this matter, for it must be your own higher selves that will point out the way in this case, so what I say can only be as suggestion.

“It would seem to be a better plan to draw together as closely as possible all those members who are loyal to the higher teachings and learn whether they are willing to take the title to allotments and hold them subject to the Temple influence and, if possible, to make those antagonistic to the work as a whole understand that their own interests lie in meeting the others on a common ground and so avoid this unnecessary trouble and delay that any legal separation would make inevitable.

“You must never lose sight of one fact; neither The Temple nor the Temple Home Association were formed exclusively for the benefit of those immediately concerned. The higher purpose, the aim of all those who are true Templars, was and still is, the preparation of a place where it might become possible for the overshadowing Christ to enter and send forth the message which the world has waited for so long. It would be truly impossible for such an overshadowing of the spiritual forces to enter and dwell with a number of disaffected, treacherous, inhuman elements. It could not do the work for which it came, even if it were possible to come. Such a place requires quiet, concentration, aspiration, unified endeavor, and faith in each other and in the common purpose. These are essentials; all else is nonessential.

“Knowing this, you can understand that whatever ties now exist between you and those whom you have found it impossible to draw into the right relationship, you should sever those ties completely from the interior and exterior aspect and build such a inner wall of protection around yourselves in the center that no extraneous force could enter to tear it down. However, remember this very important point: if such a thing were to be done, it must not be done in a spirit of retaliation or unbrotherliness; it must be done from the standpoint I have indicated; namely that such preparation could not be made in disunion. It would not matter so much were those people at a greater distance from you, but because of their close vicinity it is all the more needful that you put up such an inner wall.”

Question: “What is the fundamental cause of the lethargy of The Temple members and the difficulty experienced in increasing membership?”

Answer: “It is largely due to the causes I have before mentioned. There have been many complications in the past few months and years that would inevitably have produced just such conditions. There has been such a force opposed to The Temple that nothing but the highest aspiration and unified endeavor could have met and conquered it. You have not had sufficient help, for one thing. Blue Star is incapacitated more than half of her time by lack of the right kind of help. You require a pull, as it were, out of the slough you have permitted yourselves to sink into, AND IT IS ONLY YOUR HIGHER SELVES AND YOUR REALIZATION OF YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY THAT CAN GIVE YOU THAT PULL.”

Question: “Is there any other organization of people on this planet that has any communication with Masters or entities spiritually higher than the Masters who direct The Temple movement?”

Answer: “That seems a needless question from some points of view. If you have understood, to any degree, of what the Great White Lodge consists with its varied Orders and Degrees, you could answer that question yourselves. The Temple, and I mean by ‘The Temple,’ the cosmic organization of The Temple, is the highest phase of manifestation on the plane of matter, and a Degree or Order of The Temple may exist without the consciousness of other Orders and Degrees touching it for a definite length of time; just as one man could belong to a lodge, or a Square of The Temple, and not be conscious of other Lodges or Squares in other lands or places, while all would belong to The Temple.

“A member of any organization of acknowledged occult power could not fail to recognize as a comrade or brother any other member of the same Order or Degree. He would do so by interior rather than exoteric means. There are, you know, the various Degrees of the Great White Lodge. The Temple, that is the Cosmic Temple, is one Degree of the Great White Lodge, and any Master of any higher Degree of the Lodge might contact any individual or any group of members associated together, if they had reached a point of development which would render it possible to do so. There would be no question of higher or lower; it would depend entirely on the development of the individual himself.”

Question: “Father, you have reminded us very forcibly of our self-responsibility. Can you tell us in what directions lies the greatest responsibility?”

Answer: “I could hardly point out any single line, for the work, as a whole, is included. There is no department of The Temple work, at the present time, that is not crippled for lack of sufficient help in one direction or another and I understand, largely, what has been the cause of this, in one respect; but this much I say to you all, that you, individually and collectively, are responsible for the success or failure of The Temple work. The action of no one individual, no group of individuals, should occasion, by any means, a member of The Temple to desert, or to sink into a spirit of lethargy regarding the work as a whole. The plan is too big, the responsibility too great, for any one person to take it all in at any one time. So, it is only in the minutiae (the seeming little things) that any one member can work until he or she comes to the point where personal guidance is obtained.”

This ends the questions presented by the members and the answers given by the Master to all of us. But these Truths and directions can be found everywhere. When has there been such a time of teachings, guidelines, inspiration, and love poured out on the humanity of this planet? Here in The Temple we have eight books in print, plus 116 years of Artisans at our fingertips. The Master and the work of the White Lodge are everywhere, in everything. Our teachings are full of the injunction, “There are no little things,” and so it is throughout the manifested universe. With eyes that are beginning to truly see the connections of all life, we find Truth, Wisdom, and Love on all sides. No matter where you look, be it on the web, in all kinds of bookstores, in film, and in song, there can be found a shining kernel of Truth. Of course, you can find the darkness in all these places, too. But it takes no extra effort to keep within the Light. The choice is always up to us. Convention is always the right time to make a thorough self-examination.

One teacher was asked, “How do we experience painful circumstances without becoming embittered by them?” The reply: “By seeing them as lessons and not as retribution. Trust life, my friends. However far afield life seems to take you, this trip is necessary. You have come to traverse a wide terrain of experience in order to verify where truth lies and where your distortion is in that terrain. You will then be able to return to your home center, your soul-self, refreshed and wiser.”

We can find that home center, our soul-self, by accepting the responsibility to develop the strength to successfully battle the Powers of Darkness. We are not simply given this strength but must develop it, and not just when convenient. Remember, the Powers of Darkness, as well as the Powers of Light, are not outside of us somewhere, they are within our hearts. That is where the battle is fought, that is where the battle must be won. How often have we heard or read that it is our responsibility to take up the little things of life and do them wisely, gladly, with willing heart and loving, pure service. It is not our responsibility to ask others to do what we must do. Remember, the faults we see in another are not ours to correct, now or ever. As we correct our own faults, we will be surprised to find the faults of our brothers or sisters are also being corrected.

We do not need to seek out dragons to slay, or big confrontations to overcome in order to develop strength of spiritual will. The greatest test we will ever face is to live each day giving of the very best within ourselves. It can be a gentle day, one of those days when “small miracles occur for ordinary people day by ordinary day. There is grace in knowing what might have been but wasn’t and bliss in living a day when nothing special happens but life just works.” If it is a day of turbulence or upset, we can endeavor to transcend personal feelings and grievances. We need to remember that the turbulence is also a necessary part of the learning process and is not a jealous god bent on retribution or revenge. However, there is a fine line here when, with spiritual arrogance, we decide we are the teacher and this is the lesson the other person must learn and, “I will teach them because I am more advanced than they!” Not our job folks! Our job is ourselves and we do have the power to learn and to overcome, and most importantly, we only need to do this learning and overcoming one step at a time. Why do we make these things so difficult for ourselves?

As we strive to find self-awareness, we might remember Carl Jung’s statement, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” This work never ends because as we shine the Light of Consciousness into the dark, we see another dark corner that needs our attention. As we practice this use of consciousness, we grow in strength and discrimination.

My beloved Godmother Teddy gave me guidance in these words, “. . . to be still does not mean to be idle but to prepare an environment where we can more easily hear that inner direction which the Bible calls ‘the still small voice’ . . . to pause in our outer busyness and to take a good hard look at ourselves is a therapeutic process. Our true teacher is not apart from us, it is the part of us that listens. How often we have been instructed to listen to the still small voice, the incomparable teacher, but almost as often our automatic response is ‘yes, just as soon as I have time.’ Think of how much of our living is done on the horizontal. Going, doing, adjusting, shuttling back and forth between foresight and hindsight, forgetting to ‘look within,’ forgetting even the reason for all this hectic activity. How too bad! It is sort of like dehydrating our life experience. Could we not shift the reluctant gears of habit and change our direction so that our actions would be prefaced by an inward look? If we could achieve this, think of how many false steps we would save ourselves and how much richness we could bring to the pattern of our daily lives. There is no need to accept monotony as a part of our lives, for each of us carries within us that divine spark that can change any dull activity into an inspiring experience once we learn to Look Within, and by so doing to add a whole new dimension to our lives.”

As we continue to process the pre-, during, and post- Convention Forces, we must take this sacredness of who we are and find ways to express it in our lives, not just once, but over and over, so often that we become the absolute embodiment of Light and Love, and see that same absolute embodiment in everyone else. The Master reminds us, “There is no other way, and there can be no separateness with progress in the spiritual sense. One may keep back the many, due to the Law of the Unity of all life. Be true to yourself, be true to us, and you will hear my voice in your souls and feel my touch on your hearts. I give you my blessing, which is myself.”

These are small expressions of Truth from many sources, but we find they are but myriad facets of the one Truth. Truth simply IS. Our responsibility is to hold still, with balance and “rest awhile and see the Father’s hand outstretched to thee and Me. God’s great completeness flows around our uncompleted parts as flows the deep wide ocean round the rocks scattered in wild profusion in its wondrous depths, silent save for Nature’s undertone. And so my Child, sit thee still and let the waters pass o’er thee and bring thee Patience, Faith and Power with which this whole wide world to bless. For one is truly wondrous wise, a Master midst all My sons and daughters, who knoweth how and when to wait.”